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1. Ford and Firestone/Bridgestone>
In 2001 there was a conflict between Ford and Firestone/Bridgestone. Ford had used tired From Firestone in its SUVs which had defects and had caused (after first statistics) 21 deaths. Firestone recalled a total of 6.5 million tires. But Ford was not satisfied with that. Ford wanted Firestone to recall twice as many, 13 million, because they found out that some other tires are also a possible danger. At that point, it was too much for Firestone and they began working against Ford. It would have cost too much money and Firestone thought it would damage its reputation too much. Ford showed in this situation very good ethics, they wanted to make sure that all its customers are as save as possible. But because of the enormous danger, the recall mend, Firestone did not want to do it.
One the one hand, I am surprised from Ford that they showed so good ethics, because they took an enormous cost to make the recalls, but on the other side I was disappointed about Firestone's reaction. For this company, money seems to be more important than the lives of its customers.
The company Firestone handled the situation in a way like Enron. Enron made some people lose lots of money, at this scandal many people even lost their lives and for the company the money issue was more important.
2. Jack in the Box
Another example is The Jack in the Box study case. Hamburgers were blamed for the deaths of 3 children, because they contended E. coli bacteria. JITB made a huge recall of its patties. On short view it damaged them, because in the period shortly after this scandal, nobody buyed hamburgers at JITB any more. But on long view it was a very good decision. Since that the sales have increased steadily.
I was first surprised, that JITB made such a huge recall. With a recall of that size, it was no wonder that many people got scared of JITB products. But the success was great. Perhaps they even saved some lives by doing this huge recall.
JITB reacted completely different than Enron. They showed that they do care a lot about their customers, unlike Enron. And although the sales first decreased very bad, later the people trusted JITB again and by now, nobody is talking about this scandal any more in a bad way. JITB took responsibility for a thing, which was supposedly not even its fault.
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